


Reflected Light

by echoist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda for 5.16, "Dark Side Of The Moon."  Begins slightly before the canon end of the episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflected Light

               “No,” Dean, muttered angrily in the peculiar silence that always followed an angel’s departure.  “No - you do not get to do this, do you hear me?”  The amulet dangled from its cord, swinging too easily through empty space as he flung open the door.  Sam dodged the tiny metal wrecking ball; he knew better than stand in his brother’s way when he got that _look_.  Dean barreled out into the stagnant night air and leaned over the balcony, coating the front of his t-shirt with rust and flaking green paint.  “Get back here, you black-winged bastard!”

                A window slammed shut; a dog barked.  A sodium lamp flared and Dean covered his eyes in the sudden light.  A car alarm sounded for an instant, muffling the sound of rushing wings at his back.  Dean didn’t turn around.  “Everyone else.  Everyone else, maybe, but not you.”

                “Why not, Dean?” Castiel’s soft, even tone seemed at odds with the cheap motel, the sounds of frustrated traffic on the nearby interstate.“Isn’t it my turn?”




                “Maybe Joshua was right,” Dean began, interrupted by a curse and the discontented scuffle of loafers on cement.  “Listen to me, dammit!” he demanded, turning around to face the disillusioned angel, and _wasn’t that just a thing_? he thought on some parallel mental track where none of this was actually happening.  You know, to him. 

                “I’m always listening to you, always going where you think I should go!  I was in someone else’s heaven, Cas, drinking beer and getting groped by a beautiful woman, and I left all that to take directions from you.”  Dean paced the cracked cement, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.  “And maybe I am losing my faith – hell, maybe I never had any to begin with, but you asked for this!”  Castiel blinked, uncomprehending, his gaze slowly shifting from Dean’s angry flush to the object clutched in his outstretched hand.  _Someone else’s heaven_.

                “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Castiel shrugged into the collar of his coat.

                “The hell it doesn’t!”  Dean was shouting now, attracting attention, and he would bet money Sam was pacing the room, embarrassed enough for both of them.  “You asked for something that meant everything to me, _everything_, goddammit, and I gave it to you.  You do _not_ get to throw it away.  You do _not_ get to call that meaningless, because –”

                He stopped mid-tirade, his jaw working soundlessly.  “You don’t get to give up,” he said, finally.

                “Why.  Not.”  Castiel asked again, his mouth set in a perfect approximation of anger.  He took a step forward, feeling the soft impact as his chest collided with Dean’s fist, still extended towards him.  Dean loosened his grip; the amulet swung gently against his shirt, and Castiel closed his eyes. 

                “Because that’s the job,” Dean said gruffly.  “Team Free Will, man, that’s us.  You, me, and Sammy, and none of us get to throw in the towel.  Not even when we’re six feet under.”  His laugh echoed off the rotting tiles, unconvincing.  “Joshua said God was _here_, on earth, right?  Maybe he’s just lost, Cas, you ever think of that?  Maybe God just needs someone to find him, like  - like you found me.”

                Castiel opened his eyes, saw Dean turn away.  “You found one soul in Hell, one miserable fucking soul, and Perdition’s a much bigger haystack.  Trust me on that.”  Someone had dropped a penny in the cement when the balcony was setting; Dean stared at the parking lot lights reflected in dingy copper and didn’t look up.

                “I’m tired, Dean.”

                “Sam always sleeps while I drive.”  Dean kept his eyes on his shoes, on threadbare trench coat lapels, anywhere but the angel’s face as he slipped the amulet over Castiel’s head.

                “Dean,” the angel admonished, so softly he wouldn’t have heard it from any farther away.  Dean’s fingers slid down the length of the fraying cord, arranged the necklace beneath the rumpled Oxford shirt.  “I carved the name of God upon your bones.  I held you in the depths of despair and raised you up; I pulled you out of formlessness and made you whole.  Faith is stitched upon your heart, and still you do not believe.”

                The silence stretched, enfolded.  Sagging timbers creaked beneath their weight.  Castiel waited for Dean to step back, to scoff, but he remained, fingers pressing cold metal against his skin.  “That’s your faith, Cas,” he said, finally.  “Not mine.  Some days, I think – “  _that’s all I am.  _“If you give up on that –“

                Dean shuffled his feet, moving neither forward nor back as he spoke.  “Look, maybe – maybe I don’t know a damn thing about God, all right - but I do know you.”  Castiel had barely felt the knife Dean plunged between his ribs in that long ago barn; now he felt hot breath whispering across his ear.  He wondered at the change, wondered if it was by these differences, these subtle permutations that Dean knew him at all.  “You’re just going to have to believe enough for the both of us.”

                Dean’s hands on his chest were warm; the amulet proved conductive and he felt the vicarious rush of circulating blood.  Maybe that’s all faith was among men, the angel thought, just reflected light.  Just hope and proximity.  “I’ll try,” Castiel promised, wondering if he had finally learned how to lie.

 

  
_"Believe in me, help me believe in anything, 'cause I want to be someone who believes."  
-Counting Crows, Mr. Jones_   


4/02/2010


End file.
